Practices
Tarawih
Devotional Practices
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Origin 634 to 644 CE
The extended voluntary prayers performed nightly in Ramadan after Isha, characteristically in congregation in a mosque, during which a reciter works through the Quran so that the whole text is completed across the month. The number of units is the single best-known point of disagreement: the four Sunni schools as they settled recommend twenty, performed in pairs with a rest between each four, which is where the name comes from, tarwiha meaning a pause for rest. A minority position, argued from a report in which Aisha describes the Prophet praying eleven units, holds that eight plus witr is the sunna, and this is the practice in much of the Salafi-influenced world and in the Two Holy Mosques, where twenty is nonetheless also prayed.
Twelver Shia practice does not perform tarawih in congregation. Shia jurisprudence holds the congregational form to be an innovation introduced under the caliph Umar, and Shia Muslims who pray extra units in Ramadan do so individually.
Facts
Practice
Category of PracticeDevotional and voluntary: additional night prayers performed congregationally after the obligatory night prayer during the month of Ramadan. 3 Who Performs ItAll adherents of the tradition 1 ObligationRecommended and meritorious, not required 1Tradition: Islam FrequencyNightly through the month of Ramadan Solitary or CommunalPerformed by a gathered group 1 Liturgical and Scriptural RoleTarawih are additional night prayers offered during the month of Ramadan, widely practised though, unlike the five daily prayers, generally regarded as recommended rather than strictly obligatory. 4 Status
Status Within the TraditionTwelver Shia practice does not perform tarawih in congregation. Shia jurisprudence holds the congregational form to be an innovation introduced under the caliph Umar, and Shia Muslims who pray extra units in Ramadan do so individually. 5 Status TodaySourced to the subject's own accountLiving tradition, practised today 6 Attributions
TraditionIslam, extended voluntary prayers performed nightly in Ramadan after Isha, characteristically in congregation, during which a reciter works through the Quran across the month. 5 Origins
Origin Period Place of OriginThe congregational twenty unit form is traced by the four Sunni schools to the caliph Umar's practice at Medina. Controversy
Point in DisputeTwelver Shia jurisprudence holds the congregational form of tarawih to be an innovation introduced under the caliph Umar rather than a practice instituted by the Prophet, so Shia Muslims who pray extra units during Ramadan do so individually rather than in the congregational form Sunni communities observe. 4 Learn More
The Nights of Ramadan
Tarawih is the special congregational prayer of the nights of Ramadan, offered after the obligatory Isha throughout the fasting month and not at any other time of year. The name comes from a word for rest, referring to the short pauses taken between sets of the prayer's many units. Where the five daily prayers are brief, tarawih is long: worshippers stand through numerous rak'ah while the prayer-leader recites extended passages of the Qur'an, and in many mosques the entire text is recited across the month, a portion each night, so that the Qur'an is completed by Ramadan's end.
The prayer gives the nights of Ramadan their distinctive character. Mosques fill after Isha; families and neighbourhoods gather; the reciter's voice carrying long stretches of scripture is one of the defining sounds of the month. Attendance is voluntary and highly recommended rather than obligatory, and its reward is described in the tradition as the forgiveness of past shortcomings for those who keep it in faith.
Eight or Twenty, and How It Came to Be
The number of rak'ah is a long-standing and well-known point of difference. The practice traces to the Prophet Muhammad, who prayed the night prayer in Ramadan but, it is reported, declined to lead it regularly for fear it would be taken as obligatory. Under the caliph Umar the scattered worshippers were gathered behind a single leader, and the number that became customary in the great mosques of Mecca and Medina and across most of the Sunni world is twenty rak'ah. A significant body of scholars, citing reports of the Prophet's own night prayer, hold eight to be preferable, and both numbers are prayed today without either invalidating the other.
In Twelver Shia practice the additional Ramadan prayers are offered individually rather than in the congregational tarawih form, a difference rooted in differing views of its origin.
Umar's own description of his action, reported as ni'mat al-bid'ah hadhihi, what an excellent innovation this is, became a much-debated proof-text in later Islamic jurisprudence over whether any innovation (bidah) in religious practice can be praiseworthy, since strict traditionalists generally hold all religious bidah blameworthy by definition; scholars favoring the concept of a good innovation cite precisely this report about tarawih to argue that organizing an existing, individually practiced worship into a fixed communal form is a permissible and even commendable kind of change, distinct from introducing a genuinely new act of worship.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Belongs to Tradition
Twelver Shia jurisprudence does not perform tarawih in congregation, holding the congregational form to be an innovation of the caliph Umar. Extra night prayers in Ramadan are prayed individually.
The congregational form in Ramadan is Sunni. The four schools as they settled recommend twenty units; eight plus witr is a minority position now widespread in Salafi-influenced practice.
Element Of
Rejected Here
Twelver jurists hold that supererogatory prayer is not performed in congregation, and treat the nightly Ramadan cycle kept in Sunni mosques as a later institution rather than a practice of the Prophet.
Held Differently
The Maliki school follows the settled practice of the people of Medina on the Ramadan night prayer, which Malik records in the Muwatta, rather than the fixed count of twenty units the other Sunni schools keep.
Sources
1. Prayer in Islamic Thought and Practice
2. The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition
P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.), Brill, 2005View the Source 3. Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)
Encyclopaedia Britannica editors, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 2024View the Source 4. Islamic Creeds: A Selection
5. Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005View the Source 6. Sahih al-Bukhari
Muhammad al-BukhariBook of the night prayer in Ramadan, including Umar's gathering of the people behind one reciterView the Source The Qur'an
Misquoting Muhammad: The Challenge and Choices of Interpreting the Prophet's Legacy
Jonathan A. C. Brown, Oneworld, 2014On the twenty and eight unit dispute and its modern polemical use
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